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Essay-a-Week Challenge - Week 3

"May 20th: One Thing I Understand Better than Others"

Having humbled yourself with the last essay, take a little time to revel in a subject you do understand. What misconceptions do other people have about this subject. What do you enjoy about it?"

Topics from, A Bookful Blockhead.

I've always had a good spatial sense. Even as a kid, I would rarely get lost. In an elementary school project, I could draw out the floor plan of our house with relative ease, and sitting in the backseat of the car, I would recognize buildings and always know which direction we were heading. Of course, this doesn't mean I never get lost, which is probably why I tend not to broadcast this trait, because when I'm not sure where I am, you will find me rather stressed and uncomfortable.

A good sense of direction and the fear of getting lost probably set me up for my great appreciation of cartography - the study of maps. I love maps. In my room in Hamilton, you will find five of them around the room: a world map, a road map of Canada, two maps of Taiwan (my highlighted travel map from my trip last year and a pictorial tourist map), and a postcard map of Nova Scotia from a friend. 

I was lucky enough to go on several roadtrips when I was young. Sometimes they were day trips, to Detroit and back. Perhaps most memorable was a three-week trek to San Francisco, where 11 members of our Taiwanese church sung at the inaugural service of our friend and minister, Rev. Danny Huang, who had transferred from our church to the Formosan United Methodist Church in the San Francisco bay area. The twenty days worked wonders for my growing appreciation of maps, as we hopped across the States, exploring plenty of well known cities, parks, and landmarks. 

Currently, back at home (in Toronto) for the first few weeks of summer, I am once again typing at the desk I've worked on ever since I started working on a desk (though I didn't bring it to Hamilton as it's way too bulky). Arguably, it was my first introduction to the colourful nature of cartography:

To the cropped left is a stack of papers, books, pens, and receipts
that were pushed aside. 

My dad bought the desk not long before I was born,
pre-collapse of the Soviet Union,
making the map a glimpse into the past. 

I grew up with maps, and gazing up from my Mercator-projection desk surface, I can count three atlases and a world almanac on the bookshelf. I would watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics with an atlas in hand, trying to find every country in the March of Nations and learning something briefly before the next country was introduced. This whole procedure became much easier in 2008 when the atlas was dropped in favour of a laptop with Google Earth, which (not surprisingly) is one of my favourite Google services. 

Naturally, I enjoyed geography classes and most of history, especially if there was a geopolitical twist to it. In high school, I managed to take a geography class every year, starting with the Grade 9 basics of the Canadian geography, to the exciting studies of travel & tourism, physical geography, and geomatics. I learned the most in geomatics, probably because it was a Grade 12 course and had rather intensive projects compared to the rather fun, but less labour-intensive field trips spelunking and "exploring the tourist industry" of Canada's Wonderland. 

Geomatics deals with processing and visualizing geographic data: in essence, cartography on the computer. I had a lot of fun in this course, and we churned out plenty of maps, showing poverty in the GTA using census data, plotting down points we collected using GPS devices, and identifying potential landfill sites by evaluating an area's water system and population patterns.

There aren't many misconceptions about cartography that come to mind, though the term cartography seems to bring up sepia-touched images of explorers on ships charting out a coastline. The subject has become a very modern one, as GPS and GIS (global positioning system, geographic information system) have completely changed how map-making is done. Not surprisingly, it's rather applicable, and you probably run into its related services every day: using Google Maps or a GPS device, seeing election results on an interactive map, transit/road maps, or using any phone that has location tracking.

I suppose cartography and geomatics would fit into this week's category because I have had a bit of background knowledge that most people don't - driven by personal interest and assisted by some great teachers in my geography department. But knowledge doesn't directly translate into understanding and appreciation of a subject, which is something that I feel that everybody shares. We all use maps, and we're biologically wired to have some sense of space and location in our minds, though perhaps not as intensely as ants do. 

Arguably, my biggest misconception about cartography might be that I assume that everyone loves maps as much as myself, and consequently, I admire your ability to have read so much already, so I'll bring this post to a close. Even though I am no longer studying geography, I feel that it's a subject that is mostly learned outside the classroom, despite the iconic classroom roll-down map. So whether you're staying up-to-date on foreign news, travelling the world (on the road, or through the projector), or logging in hours and hours on Sporcle's geography games... keep doing it. May the wonders of cartography live forever [as society moves from paper maps to GPS =)]!